Criterion DVD of Tarkovsky’s ‘Rublev’ Is of Some Help

A man attempts to fly using a balloon of monstrous shape and proportion. A mob of peasants runs to stop him, but the rope that holds the balloon is cut, and the crowd watches in awe as the man rises in the air. “I’m flying,” he exclaims, sobbing with joy as a horde of wild animals runs through the majestic landscape below. But the balloon loses steam, slows down and eventually crashes on the ground, killing its occupant.

Anybody who’s seen “Andrei Rublev,” the 1966 film by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, remembers this striking sequence, which is never explained and seemingly has nothing to do with the rest of the picture.

Now the Criterion Collection’s DVD edition of “Rublev” attempts to shed some light on a movie that is likely to keep you puzzled from beginning to end--unless, of course, you hold a couple of degrees in Russian history and iconography.

Overlong, excessively demanding, soporific at times but also visually gorgeous, innovative and daring, Tarkovsky’s film is a fragmented experiment more than a conventional narrative, the fictional biography of a 15th century painter that ultimately questions the true nature of art and its creators. Like the flying man in the prologue, the film seems to imply, artists often experience exhilarating heights with disastrous results.

Shelved by the Russian government when it was first completed and later shown in various shortened versions throughout the world, the DVD edition of “Rublev” has restored the film to its definitive length of 205 minutes, and has enriched it with an audio commentary by Harvard professor Vlada Petric.

Unfortunately, Petric’s lecture covers only seven scenes of the picture and focuses a little too much on Tarkovsky’s visual style, instead of giving some much-needed explanation on what is actually going on in the film.

The DVD also includes some excerpts from a documentary on Tarkovsky, with a video introduction by Petric. Here you see the director musing on diverse subjects such as the shallowness of youth and the elusive nature of filmmaking. “Art,” Tarkovsky offers in a particularly revealing moment, “would be useless if the world were perfect.”

Another on-screen feature is a timeline featuring key events in the history of Russia, juxtaposing them with a chronology of the lives of both Rublev and Tarkovsky. The same timeline, however, looks much better printed on the jacket of the laser disc edition, released in 1994, which also includes all the bonus materials available on the DVD.

Ernesto Lechner can be reached at LechnerE@aol.com.